This plant's family is older than the dinosaurs. Most of its living species are far younger.
Garden centers sell it as a living fossil, from the time of the dinosaurs.
This sago palm is no palm at all. It is a cycad.
Cycad fossils turn up in rocks older than the first dinosaurs.
In the age of dinosaurs, cycads grew far more widely. Then their old lines thinned, and the survivors drew back toward the tropics.
But in twenty eleven, scientists compared the genes of about two hundred living species.
Most of today's species, they found, came from bursts that began about twelve million years ago.
Bigger studies since then put the starts between about eleven and twenty million years ago.
On a strip from the last dinosaurs to today, those bursts crowd into the far end.
They began on four continents at about the same time, perhaps set off by a cooling climate.
So the family is ancient, but most of its species are young.
The dinosaur plant in the pot is a new branch on a very old tree.
